This invention relates generally to safing, arming and firing mechanisms and more particularly to such mechanisms that are used to arm and initiate a train of explosives in ordnance fuzes. The fuzes are adapted for use in missiles and are designed to be responsive to forces of acceleration.
It has long recognized that ordnance items such as bombs, missiles, torpedoes, projectiles and the like are often subjected to a certain amount of mishandling, tampering and adverse environmental influences during storage and handling of the ordnance. For this reason, ordnance items have been designed to include safety and arming devices to prevent premature detonation of the ordnance prior to the occurrence of a desired event or condition. The safety and arming devices positively preclude premature detonation of the ordnance before its delivery to the target.
The principal design recognized by experts as an acceptable safe design provides an inert barrier or interrupter which interrupts an explosive train containing primary (sensitive) explosives from the secondary (insensitive) explosives leading to the main charge of the ordnance device. Upon the occurrence of the desired arming event, the inert barrier is physically shifted and a detonator is brought into alignment with the remainder of the explosive train to ready the weapon for firing upon actuation of the firing trigger, impact with the target, or other firing event. Many such safety, arming and firing devices employ a barrier containing a detonator which is turned or translated from the unarmed to the armed position at the desired time, thus aligning the detonator with the remainder of the explosive train.
In the prior art of safing and arming devices for ordnance applications, a plurality of safing and arming devices have been required to obtain a plurality of explosive functions where the explosive functions are required at different times in a weapons system.
The present invention solves this problem and allows a design for a weapon system to use a much more inexpensive and simplistic arrangement by eliminating multiple fuzes or multiple safing and arming devices.